Finally he said “You sold that picture yet?”
“I’ve had several offers but no, I plan to keep it. Just after tonight, there’s a lot here I want to remember.”
Rafe waited. “I won’t ask you then.”
“What?—ask on.”
He said “You gave it to me. I acted the fool.”
By now I really wanted the picture, but I also knew my duty. Eventually I said “You want it now?”
Rafe said “Please sir.”
It pained me now that I’d fixed my mind on keeping the thing. But whatever it cost I said it was his then.
He waited again and then asked “Why? I’m a stuck-up kid. You’re a great damned genius.”
I reined him in hard. Without eating dirt on the spot, I said I was grateful for his respect but that I had just started on a more or less endless road, so I couldn’t let him think I’d got there yet. Looking at his picture almost daily these three decades, I think I can now see what his lavish praise meant. First, the big portion of the world that lacks any talent for realistic drawing is pretty much in love with the few magicians who possess it. And second, my landscape is a plainly serious search for a large picture with a sizable mind or soul. It’s at least no tyro’s muddy colorslide peeled off the face of a photogenic view.
It was about then that Rafe said “You haven’t climbed up to the prayer circle yet, have you?”
All along he’d gradually revealed a seasoned knowledge of all the camp’s byways, and two hours ago I’d seen him at ease in the core of the place. But since Chief had warned us that the circle was for adults only, I’d strictly avoided discussing it with any of the boys. I’d thought of climbing up there by way of preparation for the induction. But then I got immersed in the picture and decided it was sufficient spiritual calisthenics for almost anything. I’d go when the campers were gone and I stood a chance of an unhurried hour. For now though, to answer Rafe, I took his own tack and said “That’s classified.”
He said “Please don’t tell me you’re one of those atheists.”
I laughed at the thought of a swarm of atheists flying at Rafe. That would truly call for a mighty offensive by the Youth Patrol. But I said “No, calm yourself. It’s not something I’m any good at talking about though.”
Rafe said “You don’t think for a minute that your painting talent is some kind of accident made by a big anonymous chemistry set, do you?”
We seemed headed for a high-level discussion on the subject. I was after all a university student in the Bible Belt and had heard several thousand such debates. So I thought I’d head this one off by a simple statement followed by silence. “I was baptized in the Presbyterian church and raised there. When I was your age, the notion of God really gave me a fit. I felt he was watching me, round-the-clock. And his eyes were round and flat as a fish eye. They never once blinked. I didn’t talk it over with anybody sensible. I didn’t know anybody who was certified sane on the subject of God. So I settled on memorizing the Sermon on the Mount and trying to follow up on every last rule. Now I can wonder if Jesus meant it seriously— it’s so damned hard, it’s almost funny. But at your age I tried it. And Rafe, it nearly killed me—me and everybody standing near. So now I’ve pulled back, a lot, in the certainty department. You can rest assured though, I don’t feel like a chemistry set, no, that somebody spilled together on the floor.”
Rafe said “Have you thanked God for your picture?”
“Not in so many words. Whoever God is, I suspect he knows I don’t think I invented myself or was built entirely by my parents’ gonads. Surely he or it knows I’m deeply glad to have real work, any day I get it.”
Rafe said “Amen.” And nothing in the sound seemed to call for a smile, much less a laugh. Then he said “I’ve climbed up
there the past two summers and said my piece and planted my stick.”
“The place is for the staff, Rafe. Do Sam and Chief know?” Rafe said “Not from me, they don’t. But it’s no damned Pentagon H-bomb secret. I’m all but grown. Hell, Chief himself took me up there the first time.”
It didn’t sound likely. “When and why was that?”
“Oh the second summer after my mother died. Pa had arranged for me to stay on, a few days after camp ended. And one of those afternoons, Chief found me swimming in the lake by myself. Looking back I can see that lone-wolf swimming was a lot more illegal than the prayer circle. Anyhow Chief didn’t blame me. He called me to the pier and said ‘Ray, go put on your overalls and shoes and meet me at the lodge in twenty minutes.’ I’ve always obeyed him and he was there waiting. So I followed his stiff old legs up the mountain, and we wound up at the prayer circle. It was a tough climb for an eleven-year-old. But I’d heard about it already and was hell-bent to be there.”
“I’m sure it’s beautiful.”
Rafe said “What isn’t?—up here, I mean. Sure, it’s got a nice view. But the sticks are the main thing, this whole big gang of sticks that grown men have prayed over. It was the best thing that had happened to me in more than a year. Hell, countless ages. I thought it proved people had a say in things.”
There was a lot of silent time. Rafe seemed to be done with the subject. I thought that nothing could have sounded safer, on that kind of theme. So I calmly told him I was carving my stick and would climb up there once the campers were gone. That much of a confidence unfortunately warmed me to the theme. I went on and told him in fulsome terms about my wish to thank the powers for my own survival in Father’s crisis, for my picture and the general safety of the summer and of course for his rescue. I didn’t mention what was carved on my stick.
Rafe had listened patiently. Then he said “So you think there’s a reason to pray?”
“You mean do I think God changes things if we ask him to?”
“More or less.”
I said “Jesus says God always answers like the father he is. Recently though I’ve got a lot of my requests back with a big no stamped on them.”
Rafe said “That’s an answer.”
“You bet.”
He waited a good while and then, to my surprise, he laughed. “No’s about all I ever get.”
I allowed as how that didn’t seem the case—take his recent rescue.
He said “I never thanked you for that.”
“You just did. Anyhow forget it, Rafe.”
He took a while to say “What if I climb with you?”
For all our sharing, it sounded wrong immediately. First there was Chief’s warning. Then there were my own increasing expectations for the visit. They were stronger than I’d admitted, even to Rafe. After the events of the past year, I’d begun to want a purification. I didn’t feel bloody or filthy with sin, but I’d thought more and more of the kind of cleansing rites described in the Old Testament and all through Indian lore. A low small hut with a red-hot fire under rocks, a big iron kettle and a world of steam.
I needed something like a spiritual sweat bath. I wanted some way to shut down the past and to aim myself all over again for adult life. Hadn’t I been in nursery school for sixteen years? Now I was primed for something like an ending to all that time and the setting out on a new vision quest. On this cold night though, I felt a fresh sadness for leaving a child whom too many others had left. And I had a new memory, of the equal place Rafe held in my induction. So I said “I’ll ask Sam or Chief if it’s all right.”
Behind me Rafe gave a deep sigh which I heard as disgust. I’d walked out on him one more time.
It hit me hard. I’ve said that I was still in the fairly hot grip of an inevitable sense of failure for those last days of my father’s life. It’s a serious thing, agreeing to watch a loved one through so much pain and humiliation that you’re helpless to ease, much less stop. You can’t refuse it but it breaks something in you that will never heal. Plus I was trapped in the strong toils of a politely raised child’s inability to refuse a request. In later years I’ve watched its power in the lives of my students. Even the most ag
gressive on-the-barricades hippie had trouble saying no if you asked him calmly and showed you cared. At that point I heard Rafe stand.
And it came to me suddenly that I wanted to know one more thing. I asked him to tell me his Indian name.
He said “I wouldn’t tell you but you’d just ask Day. Day chose it, not me—Kinyan, ‘Airborne.’ “
So I faced him and, on faith, spoke towards a person I couldn’t see. “You can guide me up.”
He waited so long I thought he’d left. Then he said “How about Saturday, a while before sunset?”
Before I could answer I heard him leave.
But all the way back to Cabin 16, I felt much better. A burden was lifting. A chance was coming at final payment of all my ghosts, alive and dead.
* * *
That was Thursday night. I taught my last class Friday morning and also put the last strokes on my picture, signing it in the lower right corner with an almost undetectable personal seal that I’d made from the letter B. For the first and last time in my career, I added the date VIII 54 and Juniper. I generally work for an image that’s not really locked to the calendar, no “Christmas Snow” or “Easter Dogwood.” But with this single picture, I needed to own up to the things that made it—a time and place.
I was all but alone on the terrace when I finished. And for the first of hundreds of similar times, I felt the almost panicky initial loneliness of a maker. You’ve made the thing with your own body, as much as any human baby. You did it asexually but with a lot of passion and often with the further strength you get from the freely offered sex of your loved ones. You’ll never get it back inside you, and still you long for someone to share the tall wave of happiness.
There was nobody near, as I said, so I called to a camper named Kip Espy, who was standing twenty yards away. He loped over and I showed it to him.
He said “Hallelujah!” which was a good deal better than nothing.
After lunch I went to Indian lore. Rafe was off in his usual corner, refurbishing his head roach, a high flaring crest that he’d made out of stiff hemp fibers. He acted normally, barely acknowledging anybody else’s presence.
I mouthed the news that I’d finished the picture.
He nodded “Good” but gave no sign of rushing across the hall to see it.
So I turned to binding the last few feathers onto my bonnet and listened once more to Day’s council plans. More than anybody else I’d met till then, Day proved what big respect you command when you absolutely believe in your own acts. He couldn’t pick up a chewing gum wrapper off the archery ground without making the act a part of his life, the one thing he was doing that instant and for a thought-out purpose. The only other examples I’ve seen of such focused care were in old Zen priests in Kyoto. All the more reason then to plan this council like the smashing of the atom. Day was also determined for us to understand its weight. This was no joke, not even a school play.
My boys had already gathered the wood for our campfire and built it on the periphery of the circle laid out on the playing field. In breechclout and bonnet I would rise and invoke the Spirit with raised arms; then I’d light our fire. Other counselors would follow suit till a wide ring of fires was ready for Rafe’s new dance. At the peak of that, whatever it was, Rafe would light the central council pile. It was far and away the biggest pile of wood, and the Tsali boys had built it as their last challenge. Mike would play Indian melodies on his flute. Other groups would do short dances, Chief would speak briefly, Mike again would lead us in the Wakonda prayer. Then as the roar of the great fire subsided, Day would lead his Ghost Dance. And as a last-night special, the Chiefs would then welcome everybody—including any parents who’d arrived early—to the lodge for refreshments.
By the time Day finished with the plan, I was also done with the bonnet. But when I stood to leave, I was surprised to find that Rafe had left earlier. Again I was disappointed at not being able to show him the picture. It was nothing major, just the sense I described of being all dressed up with no place to go or of having a substantial gift in hand but with no receivers.
I went back to the art room for a check on my first elation, and yes it was there. I’d finally painted a picture I respected. Not good enough to be sure and, God knew, no universal demonstration of the “meaning of the Smokies.” But it was an honest effort, and it seemed unlikely to shame me. I had a hot minute of wanting it back, of wishing that Rafe hadn’t forced my hand the night before by asking for it. But I feel that way —what painter doesn’t?—with every honest picture I finish.
I took up a brush, dipped it in raw umber and wrote Kinyan on the back, on the reverse side of my initials and the date. For me, that cast the die. Now I could abandon it.
The rest of the day passed like a good dream, right down to the end of the council. Completely on their own, my boys stood up at the supper table. They all faced me, George Harrell raised his hands to conduct, and all sang “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” with the whole camp watching. I managed not to boohoo, even when they crowded around my chair, taking liberal pokes and crying “S.B.D.!” That tipped off echoes from most other cabins, songs and pokes. But my boys were the spontaneous first, and it’s one of the few mitigating memories I have from those final hours.
I didn’t see Rafe at Kevin’s supper table. And wherever he dressed for the council, it wasn’t in the Indian lore room with the rest of us. We dressed ourselves but Bright Day did all the makeup, to prevent silly mess by the younger boys. Even there beforehand Day’s immense gravity transformed the normal hijinks of backstage nerves into hushed expectancy. When we were finally ready, he gave us a last check. He asked us to be silent for half a minute and then led us out.
There was a far bigger crowd than expected, with maybe a hundred parents. And as the scenario unrolled, for some reason I worried more and more that Rafe would renege on his entrance.
But no, when the last of the circular fires was lit, Mike started the drumbeat and here came Rafe. Just in the twenty-two hours since the induction, he had thought through the story of his fire-bringer dance and had added new meanings. I no longer saw him as the human thief of divine fire but as a benign spirit, human enough to be mindful of the dark world’s need for light and warmth but uncanny enough to be able to help us.
I no longer recall whether the American Indians had room for anything like angels in their theology. Most peoples do. But I know that as I watched Raphael dance, for the third and last time at the council fire, I hoped his dead mother had also known that the name she gave her only son was an angel’s name before it was a painter’s. A direct messenger from central control, for life or death.
Thinking back too, I believe Rafe made those final changes in the story he danced by the simplest of means, as in all born actors. I realize now that, just as he never asked me to turn my picture to words, I never asked him a single question about the story and meaning of his dances. But the shifting, almost reckless face he’d worn last night had eased now into a steady near-smile. It never beamed, never even hinted at frank delight. But I still believe it meant the world good, as the young man dancing surely did, for all his hard luck. And for whatever reason, his chest was painted but not his face.
Right at the end, whatever he’d tried to tell us by dancing, he moved to the high dark pile of wood, went down on a knee and—some secret way, without using matches that I could see —he started a flame. The small bright tongue licked upward quickly as Rafe stepped back. And in maybe under a minute, with him still standing a lot too close, the five-foot pile was one hot blaze. I didn’t see him leave but, once the fire was bright enough, I noticed he was gone.
I’d watched some rehearsals for the culminating Ghost Dance, but they hadn’t prepared me for what came next. When Bright Day rose he’d taken off his war bonnet and wore only a single down-hanging feather and a shapeless white ghost shirt that hung to his knees and concealed his beaded opulence. He went to the fire and chanted awhile in what I assumed was Sioux. And when th
e chant peaked to an obvious climax, he signed with a wide upward gesture for the dancers to rise.
Maybe twenty-five boys appeared from nowhere, with no trace of makeup and all in ghost shirts. At first people laughed a little. They did look a little too much like old-timey boys in nightshirts. But then the drum started and the dance began. It was hardly a dance, more like a rhythmic toe-heel walk around the fire, with signs to the sky. Day had said nothing to the parents and guests about the history of the dance or the desperate hope of Wovoka and the original dancers.
What would they have thought if they’d known of its hope for the withdrawal of the white man and the sending down of a red messiah? A poll of them all, mostly well-meaning middle-class Southerners, might possibly have found ten or a dozen who had some sense of guilt towards the red man. But almost too plainly Day had imparted that guilt, and the desperation of the original dancers, to the boys. By the time they finally stopped in place, with their thin trembling arms and stark faces raised to the stars, I almost expected the sky to answer.
When the drum weakened then and ended, I saw for the first time that one of the humblest dancers was Rafe. He’d somehow hurried into a shirt and joined the prayer dance with a face no longer giving but as needful as Day’s and the first Ghost Dancers’. Strangely I told myself Rafe was happy. At least I knew he was his best self again and could take my decision.
The showers weren’t exactly somber, but even the youngest boys showed they were still a little hungover. Again Rafe washed and changed somewhere else. None of us other participants though came fully to life till we’d changed into whites and joined the guests for refreshments in the lodge. Two of my sets of parents were there, wanting to hear how the session had gone and unanimously wanting to know who was the marvelous dancing counselor. Nobody guessed Rafe was a camper.
One of the mothers revealed to my surprise that she had been a member of Martha Graham’s company ten years before. And she said “Seriously, Martha would be impressed. That boy knows more about fire than Vulcan! There’s got to be a way to keep him dancing right on to the top. God never meant such a gift to be wasted.”
The Tongues of Angels Page 15
